Monday, July 15, 2013

Last November, the vulture capitalists that ran Hostess had decided that they had sucked all the cream filling out of those sponge cakes and went about to liquidize the company. Of course, the corporate sock puppets blamed the unions, even though the facts had shown otherwise.

The new boxes hitting shelves this week list the spongy yellow cakes as having 270 calories and a weight of 77 grams for two cakes, or 135 calories and 38.5 grams for one cake.

Right before it went out of business, the predecessor company had told The Associated Press that Twinkies were 150 calories per cake. Photos of past boxes online also indicate the weight to have been 42.5 grams per cake.

[...]

Hostess has said that Twinkies will remain the same price, at $3.99 for a box of 10. Retailers may charge different prices, however.

[...]

The new owners, which are known for fixing up struggling brands, are not using unionized workers. That means their labor costs are lower than they were for the previous owners.

The bakers union has encouraged the new owners to change their approach and work with its members. It notes that the experience of its members offers "the best chance for long-term success in consistently putting out a quality product."

So let's run this down.

The vulture capitalists and their sockpuppets said that it was the greedy union members that sunk Hostess. Now that the Twinkies are coming back - without those "expensive" union workers - the Twinkies should cost less. I mean, the workers are now not making anywhere near what they were before they killed Hostess.

But the prices didn't change. However, the Twinkies did. They shrunk. This means the customer is paying the same amount of money for less product. In other words, even though labor costs dropped, the cost of the Twinkies rose.

What this means is that with this new group of vulture capitalists, not only the workers are getting screwed, so are the customers.

As far as I'm concerned, they can take their creme filling and shove it where the Twinkies don't shine. I am not going to buy any of their products until they treat their customers and their workers with respect and dignity.

This sounds like something Hostess did in the 1990's, when they sold reduced-size (but otherwise unaltered) cupcakes as "reduced fat" cupcakes. I'm sure it worked, for a while.

Have to wonder what the new vulture capitalists might be thinking this time, though. The ingredients have got to be the cheapest part of a Twinkie, and I would think their primary market at this point are long-time Twinkie-eaters who will surely notice the size change and feel that they have been gypped. Perhaps they will still manage to blame the unions even though no union is involved? It's hard to let a good scapegoat go...